Jodie Foster, who says her first French-speaking lead role in A Private Life has a connection with her late mom, Evelyn Ella Almond.
During an interview with People, she shares, “I’m always finding bits and pieces of my mom in everything I do.”
At a young age, The Silence of the Lambs star recalls her mom had "fantasies about Europe," so she enrolled the actress in a French school.
“She had this big idea that I would leave and I would work in France and I would make French movies,” the 62-year-old reveals, adding she always liked different languages.
Jodie also shares when she watched French films with her mother, “She would say to me, ‘Tell me about the plot.’ And then I would have to tell her what happened. She probably knew what happened, but it was like, ‘I want you to work this language thing.’”
Back to the current time, Jodie says her characterpsychiatrist Lilian Steiner in A Private Life has similarities with her mom.
"My mom, when she went to France, became someone new. She walked the streets, and she’d go to Metros, and she’d go to the flea market. And her life had this whole new— she was a whole new character.”
She continues, “Much like Lilian, who leaves everything behind to join some fantasy that she has of what it would be to be a French person."
"Which is kind of what the movie is, it’s Paris the way it looked in the old days, and drink little cups of coffee, and her apartment. That was very much like my mom," Jodie says.
A Private Life will hit cinemas on 26 Nov.